Coup de grâce (Place holder title)
by Jack The Macedonian
Summary: The apocalypse is just about ending, few of the diseased creatures remain, but some still roam the land. Survivors have cordoned off areas of towns in the hopes that they can protect themselves, and if needs be, take what is theirs. This story focusses on multiple characters in a time and place where killing is a norm, and putting yourself over others can mean life and death.


Александр

Alexander was lying under the low-hanging green branches of a small pine tree, nearly camouflaged by his olive clothes if it weren't for his blue hiker's backpack resting near him. He slowly regulated the lost air from his lungs. The immediately place-able fragrance of pine needles was rich on the warm summer's day and filled the air fully. He took a deep breath as slender blades of grass brushed his bare forearm ushered by the welcomed cool breezes that dispersed the sweet aroma on this rare-hot day. He followed the walking man with the sights of his rifle, slowly panning around to line up a perfectly precise shot. But Alexander didn't shoot. He exhaled, remained still, watching, waiting. Thrushes could be heard singing in the trees and crickets in the grass as well. His left shoulder throbbed and stung, and his eyes heavy with bags, but neither the uncomfortable heat nor the strange haziness of the green field broke his solemnly fixed concentration.

It was only until the man tripped over and then recovered with a minor loss of his own solitary dignity to tie frayed shoe laces that he actually considered shooting him, but what was the point? At a glance he had nothing that Alexander needed, and shooting him would put his own life in danger, especially with his lack of rest. _Sound travels further in desolate places_. Other survivors pose a far greater threat now than anything else. It was just trouble he didn't need. And of course it would be inhumane… though a hidden hunger caused Alexander's trigger finger to twitch slightly.

The man was well over a hundred meters away, nearing the town of Gorka. He was poorly equipped, clutching not much more than a pistol in his gloved hands attached to his fatigued arms strung to the sockets like sausages at a meat market. Also he carried a small splitting axe hanging from his side, whilst shouldering a green backpack and the brown-stained tee-shirt and jeans he was wearing. His oily hair was blonde, his sweating skin was tanned, and there seemed to be little else to him.

Alexander glanced past the man and into the surroundings, quickly frisking the bushes and shrubs, open fields, roadsides and other pined treelines that were within immediate distance of his bloodshot, stinging eyes.

Nothing seemed out of place; a few burned out cars in the town, a few not so burned out cars, the covered top of some big truck, and a couple of strays near a house some three hundred meters to his left, using a far off car and his thumb as a way of approximating distance.

But looking back, the man stopped and turned. He started running - sprinting towards Alexander. Caught off guard, Alexander fumbled with his rifle, beginning to line up a shot on him again, when a gunshot sounded, the bullet whizzing past the man - a second pinging off the grass - a third tearing up the dry earth before him- but the fourth hit, sending the man flat on the floor, dropping his gun on the grass.

Alexander still remained isolated from the rising situation behind his small, safe wall of the pine tree's thousands of needles. But that small bit of relief did not go far in easing the rapidly overflowing rush of deliciously exhilarating tension.

The man began to cry out, screaming in agony, loudly. He struggled pathetically to get up, and fell straight back down again…

Showing no obvious signs of blood on his body, it seemed that he'd been hit in the leg. The man started moving. He started to crawl up the hill, continuing in his original direction of escape, fingers digging into dry soil, teeth clenching with every inch he moved, determined to prolong his sadly foreseeable end, but it was pointless.

Two men had already emerged from the opening of the town southwest of Alexander, still two hundred odd metres from him yet. One equipped with what seemed to be camouflaged military kit including a bullet proof vest, holding a rifle hit the one over the head that was wearing ripped cargo pants, no shirt and a bandana covering his mouth and also carrying a rifle, over his scraggily haired head, shouting things at him. The two progressed towards the man, walking almost casually to put their now quietening prey out of its painful misery.

Alexander watched them both, eyes affixed, beaded sweat forming and heart pounding as they traversed. He aligned his rifle sights. But why? What reason did he have to risk his life to save that of a dying man's? He was safe, hidden from sight and he had no idea how many of them might even be in the town, knowing full well that he was way out of his depth.

But as the man with the bare torso stood over the sorry creature at his feet, a boot on the hopeless hand that so yearned for the pistol, about to finish off him off, with a deep, burning hunger in his eyes Alexander held his breath… exhaled… and shot. The first man pushed backwards from the sheer power of the bullet, tumbled backwards down the hill sprawl out over the soft ground, his head hitting it with a quiet thud. He quickly pulled back the bolt and locked it into place with a racing heart and trembling fingers. He inhaled.

The second started running back down the hill and towards the town. He exhaled, and shot, the man dropping immediately after - the bullet punching through his vest, clothes and flesh.  
Quickly formulating a desperate plan he snatched his backpack, ran over to the half dead man, who was grasping his pistol like he was his life, and slung it down on the floor next to him, tearing across the grass towards one of the houses out-skirting the town, slamming against the side of it to emphasise just how protective this cover was. He kneeled behind it, kicking himself over what he had just done, but dreading the foreseeable minutes to follow.

He took two rounds clinking together from his pocket, fumbling to load them into the wooden Mosin rifle that he operated so inelegantly. Rifle raised, he pushed into the back town, house to house; peeking every corner before carefully moving on to the next until he heard something. Sounding at first like someone pouring water onto wood, he then realised that is was a man relieving himself on the wall of a house. He pushed up to another house to his right trying to get a good angle on him when he heard an engine turn on, a loud engine, for a truck, the one he'd seen just moments previous. This was definitely not good.

The man finished his piss and walked back to the main road. He uttered muffled words, something sounding like "Are they done yet?" Another with a noticeably deeper and clearer voice replied "I've no idea. Why don't you fucking look?"

And now it seemed there was a wide open hatch at the top of the ladder he climbed with such a lack of hope. In this brief moment of optimism he realized that they had no idea of the situation, assuming the shots were from the two assailants that went out into the field. He now had the advantage here, the element of surprise. He was just readying to move up to a house by the side of the main road when he heard more talk coming from the one that replied to the previous question.

He turned the engine off and shut the door. "Right, I'm going to go and get 'em, you two _stay_ here", both of them replying "yes" separately in the voices of scolded teenagers.

Alexander knew exactly what he was going to do, about to manipulate the situation perfectly with only ten seconds in which to do so.

He swapped houses for a smaller one on the right of him, nimbly moving up along its dilapidated side wall - rifle pointed down, peeking around the corner glimpsing the truck and the two targets before he took a deep breath and readied himself to do something that most men would condemn.

He picked up and threw a broken brick at the front door of a house, on the right hand side (across the street from Alexander) of the truck fifteen metres down from him, clattering against the rusty metal letterbox as it hit.

Two responded to the clamour; simultaneously startled, raising guns, but only the younger one approached uncertainly after the other reassuringly tapped him on the shoulder, to clear the unknown threat from the immediate area of caution. As he did, Alexander leaned around the corner of his building exposing a minimal amount of his body, found the one on the left hand side of the vehicle, aimed for the back of the stout man's head and fired - blood spattering the blue paint of the truck as the bullet gruesomely slashed the side of his head and brain. The man dropped on the hard ground in an instant.

This caught the attention of the frightened but stern boy, who leapt for the edge of the truck for cover and discharged a dozen, panic driven rounds at Alexander from the back side of the truck, missing every shot after Alex swiftly withdrew behind his paint cracked cover. Again Alexander peaked, aimed and shot, hitting the boy's gun by mishap, ricocheting and shattering his shoulder, leaving him reeling on the floor all the same.

The other man after seeing his friends' bodies scattered about the hill, and hearing the shots coming from the truck, knew exactly what was going on. He shouted, "You fucker!" shooting down the length of the road, hitting nothing but the truck's windows and bonnet and a fence post. Alex exposed himself, dashing across the tarmac to the back of the truck, as the man advanced on him, taking cover behind the front of the truck. Alex peaked and shot, missing the man with the hammering stress of the moment, hitting the right wing mirror. The man sent a volley of rounds in Alex's direction zipping through air and past him into bushes and smashing house windows as Alex retracted again, the adrenaline concealing from him the big cut on his bicep. Alex peaked again and shot, hitting the man in the arm, making him scream out.

There was a silence and then paced footsteps as the man waited to recover from his freshest trauma and then he again, started screaming… and screaming… the distinct screaming of a man whose flesh was being ripped and torn from his bones as he lived, in horrific pain and panic, a short moment of absolute agony, through which Alexander could make out twisted grunting and tearing sounds. And the man screamed his last. The two strays from before had caught up with him and done Alexander's dirty work, continuing to rip, tear away and gorge on the disgusting sack of human meat, rich with deliciously pink blood, like a starving fat man given a medium rare steak.

The man was dead… and now what? What could he do? Save the man who's nearly bled all of his blood? Yes, if this bloody mess had been for anything it had to have been for that. He unslung the Kalashnikov from the stout man's shoulder, took the magazine from the unconscious boy's gun and ran… ran back out of the town, towards the man, towards his backpack, with the slightest hint of a disturbingly dark smile on his lips. The smile went.

Dumping his collectables on the ground and kneeling he examined the blood covered calamity in front of him. He'd been shot through the leg but with no exit wound. He got hold of his backpack and snatched an already unpackaged bandage from inside, doubled it over, pulled up the man's trouser leg and wrapped it tightly around, one, two, three, four, five times, tying it off in a strong double knot and brought his leg back down. Alex rolled him over, taking off his backpack, hauled him back and rested his leg above it, stopping him from losing the little blood he had left. He wiped his sweat beaded forehead to look back at the man who was practically out of it, slapping his face to wake him, which worked… but not for long. The pale white man kept slipping in and out of a vague consciousness every few seconds from the fact that almost half his blood had been eaten by the greedy, thirsty earth.

The pain kept him there though, but barely. But what would he do now? He had no other medical supplies… no pill can fix a loss of blood, and even if it could there wouldn't be a chance in hell that Alexander would find it. And even if he manages to live long enough to rehabilitate, the bullet would infect the wound, spread over his body and kill him. Alexander started pacing. "Thank you" said the man on the floor, little louder than a whisper and chuckled. And Alexander shook his head, knowing that he should have just stayed out of it… should never have shot the deep voiced man, the boy, the stout man, the military man and the shirtless man. Should have just stayed behind the safe wall of the pine tree's thousands of needles and left well enough alone. A drop of blood hit his boot. He now noticed the blood dripping from his elbow, streaming down from his upper arm and the big gash on his bicep, only now becoming apparent, making a pitifully minor addition to the huge depth of the dissipating situation.

He had saved a man only for him to die. He knew what he would do. He said a meaningless sorry, picked up his rifle, aimed… and clicked. The gun was jammed... Was this supposed to be fate? Or just a cruel joke of an inconvenience in completing this final morbid task.

And then he heard softened footsteps behind him, a pistol click, and a gunshot.

He fell to the floor, shot in the chest...

The boy down at the truck was now dead. Woken from his sorry slumber, come to seek some worthless revenge, and died.

This was fate. He looked at the man on the floor in disbelief. "Thank you" he expressed gratefully, a big load lifted from his heavily burdened chest.

But as the man repositioned his gun, he realised that it wasn't fate. Just his good luck, the other man first, with a very, very bitter aftertaste. Alexander lunged for him as the man cackled, but he shot him in the shoulder. In overwhelming shock he punched the man in the face repeatedly bludgeoning with brute force and tree trunk arms that quickly became branches, then sticks and then twigs…

Alexander was exhausted and dying. The man was dying or dead.

Everybody else was dead.


End file.
